It is a fact that in the field of aeronautics there are primarily two kinds of aircraft, lighter-than-air craft which are supported in the air by flotation forces, for instance airships and so on, and heavier-than-air craft, which are lifted by aerodynamic forces, among them aeroplanes, helicopters and so on.
The principal difference between these two kinds of aircraft resides in that whilst the former two need no wings, the latter, as currently conceived technologically, must carry such wings to produce aerodynamic forces that will allow a body heavier than air to be airborne and the aircraft to be trimmed; this so far as aeroplanes are concerned, for helicopters use a completely different supporting system, the renowned propeller that is very specific in its use, for albeit advantageous from the standpoint of vertical take-off and landing, its performance as to load capacity and speed is very low as compared with the performance of aeroplanes.
Nevertheless, in the field of aeroplanes, their performance with regard to consumption and speed and risk of accidents is far from what would in theory be considered optimal. This is due to their actual configuration, for though it has the best aerodynamic features known to date in practice, these are far from satisfactory precisely because of the existence of a central body, the useful portion of the aircraft, to which large-sized wings must be attached.
From the theoretical standpoint, the ideal solution would be to have a markedly lenticular aircraft with no wings, for this configuration yields the best aerodynamic performance. However, it has heretofore been impossible to design an operative aircraft of this type because such configuration is problematic when it comes to keeping it balanced in space, and these problems have not been overome till now.